AN: So this chapter is kind of a lot - but I hope there's a lot to like? :) Let me know what you think!

As August rolls into the valley on scraggy clouds, the train brings a worn, sage green trunk that's tagged Hazelle Hawthorne, District 12 with a return address from somewhere in the Capitol.

Anse Oliver from the train station calls her and offers to deliver it. Once he's left, Hazelle opens the trunk with a creak, finding first the musty smell of mothballs.

She retrieves the notebook on top, which is bookmarked with a letter written in cursive that's so ornate Hazelle has to train her eyes to read it. From what she can discern, the sender is a retired stylist who heard about Hazelle and her commission through the clothing drive. The sender recounts making do with what they could in their own early days of fashion, boiling starch out of potatoes and dying stains out of shirts with flowers. So Hazelle's rather rudimentary commission has struck some nostalgic bone, and the sender wishes to extend their tutelage to her. They cannot venture out into the districts in their state but would welcome Hazelle into the city should she so choose. The sender hopes Hazelle can make use of their donations, and she's welcome to write back with any questions.

The letter is signed Tigris with a flourish.

At a glance, the notebook seems filled with practical advice and workarounds, scribbled diagrams and pictures. The trunk holds layers of furs.

When Madea visits to pick up clothes for distribution, Hazelle shows her the new furs as well as the letter on the off chance that she knows this Tigris.

But when asked, Madea winces reluctantly. "The name rings a bell but I don't remember from where. There was a lot of turnover with stylists. It's hard for many of them to stay relevant with how quickly the trends change. Or, well, it was," she corrects herself. But she doesn't look sad about it, Hazelle notices. From the box, Madea picks up a long, fur-lined coat. "This looks like something my grandpas would wear."

Hazelle folds her arms in thought, looking over the coat. "Could make an entire hat from each of those cuffs."

Madea smiles at her. "Well, whoever Tigris is, she knew to send all of this to the right person. Will you take her up on the offer?"

"No." Her voice is near hoarse with incredulity. Madea's face pinches in confusion, and so Hazelle tries to sound more reasonable. "She's already given me tips for how to get by without much to use. That's more helpful to me right now than some apprenticeship in the city. Anything else would take me away from the commission."

"That makes sense. And it's not like I didn't leave the place as soon as I could myself. But there is more opportunity there."

"We'll forge our own out here," Hazelle replies with a shrug. They have been so far. Madea seems to echo this thought, nodding with a look around the room that's become home to the clothing commission.

They're making good time. Hazelle plans to move on to bedding before too long. She knows she'll be on her own soon enough - or rather, Madea won't be as available, what with her upcoming job in the new Justice Building. But others have offered her help where they can, too, and she's not one to slap away helping hands.

Hazelle follows Madea out, figuring she could use some fresh air and walk her children home from school. She comes across Haymitch and Katniss standing in the road. Up ahead, Peeta rides around on a red bicycle.

"Where'd he get that?" she asks them.

"Beetee," they say with the same dejected inflection. They even share matching scowls and crossed arms.

While she fights a smile, Hazelle recalls briefly meeting Beetee Ma at the wedding back in Thirteen, seated in a wheelchair and peering up at her under his glasses.

Gale introduced them. They worked in Special Weaponry together.

Her smile drops off her face, lands somewhere on the cobblestones.

"He's going to break his neck on that thing," Haymitch mutters under his breath.

"It came with a helmet," she points out halfheartedly. She wouldn't let her kids on one herself, helmet or not. She'd sooner trust them on a mule, something that can stand and walk on its own legs and only needs directed where to go.

"I just know he's going to fall and not tell us," says Katniss, and Haymitch shakes his head in grim assent.

"What am I not going to tell you?" Peeta shuffles to a stop in front of them, causing Katniss and Haymitch both to take what looks like an involuntary step forward. He raises a brow at them as he tucks a stray, damp curl back under the brim of his helmet.

"Whether you're trustworthy on that," Katniss replies coolly, recovering from her lurch. She crosses her arms again, as if in indifference, but there's tension in her shoulders.

He rolls his eyes. "Oh, I'll be fine. Delly had one. You don't forget once you learn."

"You and memory aren't exactly on the best of terms," Haymitch reminds him. Hazelle's mouth falls open; he must be worried to throw something like that in his face.

Peeta knocks on his helmet. "Maybe a good bump on the head will fix that." He kicks off, swaying as he pumps the pedals.

Still looking down the road, Haymitch asks Katniss, "Has he hurt his head around you recently? I can't think of a time."

"Once," she answers after some thought, squinting against sunlight. "He was okay - nothing happened. He called Aurelius immediately after but they didn't talk long."

Haymitch nods along to this. "Good thing the kid's on top of it - does his homework and everything. More than we can say."

"I listen," says Katniss, more indifferent than defensive.

"And I over-share all the wrong things and lowball my goals. But enough about us." Haymitch looks at Hazelle now, just as she's beginning to feel like an intruder, and ticks his head up in greeting.

"I have a new pen pal who invited me to the Capitol," she offers.

His laugh is more surprised than sardonic - but not by much. "Just going off personal experience here, but I'd advise against accepting that invite, Haze."

"I'm not-"

"Momma?"

Hazelle turns to her children, who must have been let out from their lessons early. They look at her guilelessly, even Rory, who's beginning to tower over her.

"If Peeta lets us," Vick is sure to start, "can we try his bicycle?"

"Let's let him get the hang of it first," is all she says.

"But it came with a helmet," Haymitch reminds her, and she flat-eyes him while her children trudge off.

They flock to Katniss, who wraps Vick and Posy in her arms, knocking his shoulder and her head together. They giggle but there's something melancholic in Katniss' expression that makes her let go.

Hazelle glances sidelong at Haymitch and finds he's studying them as well. They watch as Katniss forces in a breath and brushes stray hair from her face. Then, she's nodding along while Rory talks over his siblings about their snare line, and she looks tired and a little sunburnt but no longer stricken.

"Rory's thirteen going on thirty, huh?" asks Haymitch.

Hazelle shakes her head fondly. "I think that's just being fourteen for him. His birthday's on the seventeenth so he's feeling extra mature."

Behind them, a bell rings and grows louder. It reminds Hazelle of a fire alarm and her blood runs cold.

But it's only Peeta on his new bicycle. He chances a hand up to wave at her before snapping it back down onto the handlebar and coasting away. He circles around the others with a boyish grin, which conjures a scowl out of Katniss and the opposite reaction from the kids.

With an upraised palm, Haymitch says, "And he's nineteen in December yet feels the need to be extra immature."

Hazelle quietly catches her breath, her hand curled to her neck, her heart still in her throat. "Are you three going to share?"

"Yeah, no. I doubt Katniss could reach the pedals, and I'm not supposed to do anything particularly extraordinary for a while. I'll go ahead and call that extraordinary."

She smiles, sympathetic. "Doctor's orders?"

"Common sense, really. But yes," he says with haste. "So who's trying to lure you to the city?" His light, condescending tone doesn't quite mask the concern in his expression.

"A retired stylist that wants to teach me."

Haymitch considers this more seriously now. "Would you go?"

"No," she says, emphatic, and he raises his brow. "Sorry. Madea asked me that, too. But of course I wouldn't. I could never bring my family there."

"They don't have to go with you," he says. "I bet you'd learn enough in a month or so."

"You want me to go to the Capitol?"

"Well, no. But if you think you should, and it's just the thought of your kids going that's stopping you, there's ways around that. I'm sure there are willing babysitters around here. Or you can drop them off in Two."

A crease forms between her brows. "I've never left them alone for so long. Never needed to." She shakes the thought of it away with a small turn of her head. "Even if I went, it wouldn't be for a while."

Haymitch shrugs. "Might be for the better; I doubt you'd get along with whoever this is in person. What's the name?"

"Tigris." She doesn't expect his look of recognition nor Katniss whipping her head around in surprise.

"Tigris?" echoes Katniss, interrupting Rory.

Learning that Tigris aided Katniss and Gale during their deployment softens Hazelle's reserve toward her. There's something owed now as well.

"Small world," remarks Haymitch. He seems like he wants to say more but thinks the better of it. Hazelle lets it be; she's not going to the city anyway, and she trusts he'd tell her if it was anything she ought to know.

That night, once the kids have washed and gone to bed, Hazelle reads through the notebook and writes Tigris back to decline her generous invitation as well as thank her for the advice. She mentions having learned similar tricks from her time as a laundress, particularly the potato one, given she had mouths to feed as well as clothes to starch. But she's learned new things from the notebook that will be of good use.

She omits any mention of the Star Squad. She doesn't want to impel talk of war or loss - if Tigris even writes back at all. While their correspondence can end here with her return letter, Hazelle finds she's interested in a response. So she keeps her questions to wool yarn.

In the morning, she drops a hat onto Alice's head. Her friend turns away from a sheep and toward her as Hazelle steps down from the lower rung of the fence between them.

"I stripped the inner lining for another piece," says Hazelle by way of greeting. "So now it's a sunhat." She'd used one of Tigris' workarounds and was pleased that it worked.

Alice chuckles and removes the hat, lifting flyaway hairs from her stubby braid with the heat and static. She looks it over, nods. "I'll take it. Won't do much against rain or snow but it looks as though we're not getting much of either anytime soon." She wipes her brow with her wrist, inadvertently waving the hat, before replacing it on her head and canting it against the east-leaning sun.

Hazelle looks around and sees Wilbur clearing the pigpen and Hector the coop. For all the space their new backyards have, the Grants use every square foot of it. She wonders when and where they'll relocate their farm.

"Besides Vick, considering we share him and Aiden at this point," says Alice, "how's your little herd?"

Hazelle hangs her forearms over the fence and sighs. "Growing like weeds before my eyes. Posy wrote her name and counted all twelve stairs to her room the other day."

Alice mock stumbles and tips her new hat back as if being windblown. "Well, I'll be! She'll catch up to Glenn at this rate." She guides the sheep back to the fence. "Open that gate, would you?" She does, and the sheep lumbers past her. "Hector said he hasn't seen Rory as much at the site. Katniss making a hunter out of him?"

Hazelle nods. "He's catching on quick. I have to remind him it doesn't get him out of school and chores, though."

Alice chuckles as she begins to work the shears. "I hear you. Hector opted out of continuing his lessons - he's almost seventeen, after all - but we told him he's got to find something else to fill that time. Since then he's become quite the cheese-maker." Her brow furrowed in concentration as she peels a layer of fleece from the sheep, Alice still manages to make an ironic face. "Of course, now that the McCoys are back, he'll be spending all his free time with Leevy."

"And what's wrong with that?" asks Hazelle, starting to smile.

"Nothing wrong with it. Though it's new territory for him and me and Wilbur."

"I doubt it's new territory for you and Wilbur."

"Shut up," Alice says through a smothered laugh. "I mean, you know how it goes. You lecture about curfew and respect and all that, and in the back of your mind you're remembering how you only listened with half an ear in their place. No." She pushes the sheep back into place with her thighs.

Hazelle just shakes her head and smiles to herself. She's grateful Rohan was there for that first talk with Gale; he remembered to mention matters like love and trust while Hazelle was more preoccupied with all the risks and consequences. At least Gale seemed receptive to their overall approach. Since then, she's known to answer her children's questions in two parts: like herself and like Rohan.

She can feel her smile fade at the memory of her late husband. She misses his telltale smile. She spent so much time looking at his mouth for a reaction to anything she did or said. Doing that often caused a reaction in itself, which was usually to kiss her.

She's not so lonely as to want to replace that… replace him. There was never a need to find someone else out of convenience, and so she didn't. She doesn't now, either.

But perhaps she wouldn't protest if someone came around that she could love just as much. She's choosing to believe Alice that it's only different, not better or worse.

Maybe it would be easier for her to imagine if she'd been with others before Rohan. Instead, she shirked her mother's expectations to see the tall older boy with the cleft chin, and that unfolded into the rest of her life since.

While she's perceived it this way for years, something stirs in her and slips out of her mouth like water from a tub.

"I've been a mother for half my life." Hazelle fixes her gaze on the little flock, embarrassed to have said something like that aloud, even in front of trusted company.

"And what's wrong with that?" Alice echoes but her voice is gentle.

"Nothing. Only… I think it's made me feel older than I am. Like I don't have time to be someone else to-" she lifts and then drops a hand, mumbling, "someone."

"Well, you know what I'm going to tell you."

"Don't." She concedes a bit, admitting, "You've helped me come around to it. But I can do the rest myself - on my own time. I'm not in a hurry. I rushed last time."

"You and Rohan didn't date in school?"

"No. We were in a big friend group together - but it sort of broke up. You know how it goes, once some start to graduate," Hazelle says, evasive. "Rohan was two years ahead of me. I didn't see him again until I joined the same crew."

"And the rest is history, huh?" Alice repositions the sheep, rubs its back. "Almost there, buddy. Well, I say, this time around, you relax and call it good fun. Hell, call it plain fun."

"Plain fun got me a husband and a baby in the same year," Hazelle replies drily. Alice reaches over to make a jabbing gesture against her shoulder in time with a click of her tongue, and Hazelle shrugs her away, rolling her eyes. "Even if I got the shot or whatever else, I still don't know how to go about all that around my kids. That's another thing I plan to do on my own time: bring it up with them."

"So responsible," Alice stage whispers to the sheep. He blinks back, only half-shorn amidst all their talking. "Though I'd say that's the kind of thing you ask forgiveness, not permission for. But yours are good, hardy kids - and you know better than to bring anyone troubling around them. Not that you can't sleep with trouble. Nothing's a mistake if you take notes after, make it look like you learned something."

"Shear the damn sheep!" laughs Hazelle, snatching the sunhat off Alice's head and swatting her arm with it. Unfazed, Alice mimes writing intently with pauses to look off to the side, presumably at an invisible lover. "Alice!"

"Today, Anse Oliver… Tomorrow, Odin Rosenberg… Tomorrow night, Doctor-"

"Someone will hear you!"

"And they'll get the ball rolling!" counters Alice, grinning.

"I told you, I'm on my own time." Hazelle matches her grin. "But it would save me time if Odin heard."

That sets them off again, as does the realization that the flock has moved to the far side of the gate, away from them.

Once their laughter dies down, a judicious look crosses Alice's face, her brow raised knowingly. "Now, you should probably stay away from some trouble."

Hazelle gives her a stern look. "Alice, come on."

She raises her hands in defense. "Maybe I've been happily married for too long or my eyes are shot. But he's not ugly when he's behaving."

"He's also in no place for that right now."

"We know that. Does he?"

"Better than either of us, I'd say." Hazelle considers the downtrodden grass and scattered hay at her boots before saying, "I'm sure we both know well enough when to be wary of men. And I know there are reasons to dislike him. But that's not one of them."

"So you've said."

"You don't need to worry about him taking advantage anyway; I'm not his maid anymore."

Alice's face sours a little at the reference. "Yeah, but I'd hate for you to become his new remedy, you know?"

Hazelle pushes off from the fence. "Not planning on it." And for all Haymitch's riches and her own dispassionate consideration of remarriage, she never has. It was always out of the question in some way or another. And that's without his own input - he's concerned enough that they're friends again.

They turn at the pigs erupting into squeals. Somehow Wilbur whistles over them as he refills their trough.

Hazelle says, "Wilbur seems to like him. He's even trying to goad him into that fishing trip."

Alice sighs, still looking off at the pigpen. "Wilbur can't walk on anything but common ground. His own stepsister died under him, and he tells me, 'Let bygones be bygones!'"

"You know that's bigger than Haymitch," Hazelle chides, her voice dropping an octave. They didn't watch the war tribunal together last winter to come away still thinking like that. "So does Wilbur. There's no excuse to act otherwise - especially not when Haymitch has been trying, too. He-" She's about to mention the bottle he gifted them but the words die on her lips as Hazelle remembers how she didn't bring it. Her face prickles hot with old shame. She says instead, "He shouldn't be alone in reaching out."

Alice is quiet for a moment. "I see what you mean," she allows. "We're all we've got, and I did tell you once we don't have to live like we did in the past. I mean, I trade eggs with Capitol folk, and Hazelle Hawthorne is considering having fun. It's a truly new world. Gate?" she prompts, and Hazelle obliges, albeit with an unbridled shake of her head.

The now fully shorn sheep bleats all the while. Alice mimics it when she slides back through the gate, the lock clinking dully behind her.

They scoop bushels of fleece into a big canvas bag and talk about the latest newcomers, most of whom they know, and how a few buildings are almost finished in town. Of particular note is the grocery with refrigeration to be installed along the back wall.

Alice ties off the swollen bag, lifts and weighs it in her arms. "Between me, my boys, and Greasy Sae, we should have all of this cleaned and roved by Monday. And in all fairness," she says as an afterthought, "I don't have any new reasons to dislike him."

Hazelle smiles. "Thanks, Alice."

They watch a sheep wander up to the fence, and then Alice remarks, "Well, Moe likes you."

"Moe doesn't strike me as a bachelor." Hazelle reaches down to scratch his head. She'll have to show Posy how soft they still are when shorn, seeing how much she enjoyed pressing her hands into their woolen sides.

She comes home to news that Rory and Katniss have taken down a young buck.

Bent over its quarters and a bowl of salt, Katniss mentions that a portion of the Meadow has been sectioned off. "For the medicine factory, probably," she says.

"It'll be put to good use, then." Hazelle isn't planning to picnic there anytime soon to enjoy the rest of it, blooming with flowers and sun beams though it is. She assumes they know where not to dig.

Suddenly, Hazelle wants to hear all of her children's voices before the day is over so, after Katniss leaves with the pelt and her bag full of wrapped game meat, they call Gale. She lets her children have their time with him on the phone first. As usual, they tell story after story until their turn comes to an end, and that's when they get sentimental, having only a precious minute left.

She sees Posy wipe her wrist under her nose and nod to whatever her brother is telling her, before she hands the phone over to Hazelle. "Here you go, Momma. Tell Gale you miss him, too. Maybe that will work and we'll see him sooner."

Hazelle brings her daughter's head to nuzzle at her hip and the phone to her ear. Right away, Gale asks about her. She tells him of Tigris' letter, and Gale laughs in triumph at his prediction about a washed-up stylist coming to pass but agrees that she probably shouldn't travel to the Capitol right now. She asks him how he's doing.

"That's basically asking how work is going."

"Well, how's work going?" she asks, and Gale just groans. "Any way we can help?"

"Oh, just change human nature," he replies dryly. Hazelle frowns at the receiver, and after a moment, he sighs. "No. I can't even ask for you to visit me sometime soon because I wouldn't be around much anyway. That's what I've told Vick and Posy, too. Rory's not bothering to ask." There's a slight rasp in his voice that she hears him take a second to swallow back. "Anyway, I just… get fed up with the people I work with - who I work under, mostly. Every day, it seems more and more like nobody even agrees on why we rebelled. Some just wanted a revolution when others needed it."

"I see," says Hazelle. She pats Posy's back, prompting her to join her brothers outside.

"Yeah, so do I. And I don't like what I'm seeing."

"Gale, are-" she starts, clears her throat. She doesn't know how to say it in a way that won't burn him. "Are these the same people you worked for in Special Weaponry?"

She can hear him hold his breath over the phone. "Some, not all of them. But I see your point."

"I'm not trying to make a point," Hazelle says, treading further gently. The front door opens and closes. "I'm telling you to be careful. And maybe think about where you're at, if that's the best place to do what you want to do."

"So you think I should step down?" His tone is brusque, insulted.

"Gale, I don't know what to think about some of the things you tell me." She closes her eyes, suppressing a deep, discouraged sigh. "I'm worried about you. At the very least, you need a break."

"I can't just-!" Either he stops himself or their connection cuts out. But the dial tone doesn't come. She imagines him glaring at the ceiling. "I can't do that right now, Mom," he says in a more deliberate way. "I need to be a part of this. Winning the war wasn't all it took to make things right; it just gave us the chance to. If I'd have known that before, maybe I wouldn't have given my all, then." His voice trails off, weighed down with regret.

And Hazelle is miles away, and even if she was right in front of him, all she could do is hold him. But right now that's all she wants to do anyway.

"But I really need to now," he tells her - tells himself. "I've learned from the best how to make do with what I've got - so that's what I'm going to do."

She doesn't know what else she can say to that besides, "Well, let me know when there is a good time for us to visit. I think it would do you good. Would do us all good, really."

"I'll look over my schedule tomorrow. I hate that I have to say that to you but it's true. I want enough time for you guys or else I'll just end up feeling worse."

"I understand, baby."

When Hazelle hangs up the phone, she dials another number.

On what seems like the final ring, "Hello?"

"Are you busy?"

Haymitch sputters out a laugh. "Not unless you count rearranging my bedroom busy."

She rubs her forehead. "Can you come over? Please? It's about Gale."

His voice laced with hesitancy, but thankfully not reluctance, "Yeah, hold on."

In the meantime, Hazelle watches her children organize a cartwheel contest with some others next door. She keeps to the porch so she's not called over to judge. She's glad Rory is participating - even though she suspects that he thinks he's humoring them. He could've been tanning the pelt with Katniss but she didn't invite him along; she seemed to want to be alone the rest of the day.

When Haymitch appears on the cobbled pathway, Hazelle can't help but study him out of the corner of her eye. Like the rest of them, he's bronzed under the summer sun, offsetting the silver at his temples. He's filled out more but it hasn't returned solely to his gut - there's more to his shoulders and thighs. While Alice's comment about his looks when he's behaving echoes in her mind, so does her warning.

He joins Hazelle on the porch steps, sitting down next to her with a dutiful sigh. "All right, what's interrupted my busy schedule?"

She relays the part that she can't confide in anyone else about. "So here I am, clear across the country, while he's going through all this. But even if I dropped everything and went to him, I couldn't solve anything myself. Not like I can knock on the president's door and demand answers."

Haymitch cracks up at this. He holds up a hand. "Sorry. I just pictured that, and all I saw was your mother."

"I know." She presses her palms into the step, worrying her bottom lip. "I did the opposite of her. I let him leave for this job. I recognized that he's an adult and this was a part of life," she tells herself as much as Haymitch. "But he's part of something that I've no clue how to guide him through when he's struggling. I'm not even supposed to know about the national conspiracy that's causing him grief."

"Well, one of many conspiracies," he says with an upward glance. "Allegedly."

"I should be glad my son has problems I can't fix; it means he's able to do more than I ever could. But this is so much bigger than him, Haymitch." Hazelle shakes her head at herself. "And I haven't intervened until now, suggesting that he step away. I haven't known what else to do or think about… any of this. I mean, it wasn't until you brought up the higher-ups that I realized I should've been hating Coin."

"And Katniss took care of her for you."

She mostly ignores his asides; she's too out of her depth to think about what all must have been behind that. "He believes he's supposed to shoulder this and see it through. But should he?" she finally asks, turning toward Haymitch.

He grimaces a little. "Depends on who you ask. Remember, every cynic's just a disappointed idealist," he recites. "At this rate, Gale could be a burnt-out misanthrope by New Year's. Or he won't. Kind of up to him how that goes. Same goes for you."

Hazelle holds her head over her lap. "I can see why you said politics are draining."

He raises his brow in wry recollection. "Oh, yes. Having to negotiate things you believe are nonnegotiable, playing the political theater when it shouldn't be a show in the first place."

"I can't tell if you're talking about the war or the Games."

"Yeah." He stretches with an open yawn and leans back on his palms. "So your oldest left the nest and happened to dive into a wolves' den. I won't lie, it's pretty cute he thinks he can fix the country if only everyone else would just wise up. Reminds me of a couple other young, arrogant fools."

She coughs dryly. "You'd better be among th-"

"At least," he presses on, albeit with an uptick in his mouth that pleads guilty, "he realizes now that ain't how it works. And you gave him an out. He may be loath to consider it but at least he's aware it's an option."

"I hope so." She wrings her hands in her lap. "Maybe I threw too much at Gale over the years, and that's why he's so ready to give all of himself."

"I don't know about that. But for what it's worth, you're in good company when it comes to throwing too much at your kids. I threw Katniss into combat to make for better television."

"I let mine throw himself into combat."

Haymitch pats her shoulder, a hearty thump-thump that she braces against to keep from tipping to one side. "Tell yourself it was worth it. We had an uneventful July, and I haven't seen one starving soul this summer."

"I know," she murmurs, thinking of life before. She looks up from her lap to her children, now across the street. Reluctant, Hazelle stands up from the porch steps. She'll need to corral them to help with dinner soon, and they might wander off again before too long. "Thanks for penciling me in last minute."

"Just this once. Give me a full day's notice next time." Haymitch chuckles to himself as he rises. "About time someone called me instead of just showing up and dousing me with ice water."

"Ice water?" she repeats, appalled.

He waves an irreverent hand. "Let's call it an old solution for an old problem."

This reminds her of another part of her talk with Alice this morning, albeit an unspoken one. "You might not remember this," she says with another glance at her children, "but I didn't share the bottle you gave me for that first bonfire. I was worried it'd look bad for both of us. But it wasn't my place, and I'm sorry." He makes a face, and she raises a hand before he can deflect with something snarky. "I know this is out of nowhere. Please say what you mean."

He blinks at her. Then, begrudgingly, he looks hurt, and her stomach drops at the sight.

"So I'm a little disappointed," he admits. "I bet I was then, too. It's hardly relevant now, though. The night could've gone differently if you did humor me, and maybe then we wouldn't be here. And I like here - um, more than before - which ain't saying much, really, but." He shrugs, wincing at himself as if he's said too much.

All the while, Hazelle falls silent. She takes stock of this man and again finds the arrogant boy she once knew wanting. She thinks of him moving furniture in his house - and the empty kitchen cabinet, the silently placed picture frames, the goose coop, the one-pot meals, the newly dug fire pit... He's remaking himself, and he's vulnerable for it. Anything extraordinary would only interrupt him, threaten his progress.

"Hey." She feels his hand on her back.

She has to ignore how it lights up and down her spine; she won't be a remedy, and she can't be anything extraordinary to him.

Hazelle waits until she's ready - for what, she doesn't try to know - to chance another look up at him. His hand falls away when she does.

His freckles have darkened; they almost stand out more than the scars now. For a fraction of a second, she wants to touch them.

Haymitch seems none the wiser when she meets his eyes. "Thanks for thinking to say that. Not many would bother." And then, because he's gone too long without a quip, "Even though this is all a ploy to get me to change the goose's name."

"Oh, don't you-" Hazelle scolds while he bursts out laughing.

He offers his arm for her to swat. "Listen, geese are dumb enough that you can get away with calling her Peppy or whatever the hell-"

"Pepper," she corrects with arms akimbo, grateful to play along rather than be swept up in maudlin thoughts - as if there are no other good men in this valley, "because it has spots."

"It!" Haymitch slaps a hand across his forehead, grinning underneath, then unfurls it to correct, "Waddles is a girl."

"That makes it worse."

"It was your daughter's idea!" Leant back with his shoulders hitched and his arms spread low at his sides, his whole body expresses indignation. She realizes that Haymitch could rival Alice in theatrics when he forgets to be gruff. They'd either be a hoot together, she muses, or get along like a mine on fire.

His energy is hard to ignore, given how haggard he's been for years. He moves better, looks better...

Dropping her arms to her sides, she smooths her expression. "I'll call her Waddles if she's plucked first. The district needs pillows."

"Brutal," he drawls, shaking his head. "They're almost done molting for the year. How's that?"

She considers this for a moment, then nods once. "I'll make it work."